Saturday, August 30, 2014

zing
verb, intransitive. To move swiftly. To attack or criticize sharply.
noun. Energy, enthusiasm, or liveliness. In cooking, a strong or piquant flavor.

Carol narrowed her eyes as her niece entered the apartment. Compared to her usual carefully-groomed appearance, Zoe looked awful: barefoot, no makeup hiding the acne, her hair gathered untidily in a scrunchie, falling in an uncombed pony tail. Carol was tempted to zing the girl with a caustic remark, then she noticed Zoe's red-rimmed eyes. She had been crying, and recently.

Carol returned her attention to the frying pan full of bacon. They had all cried a lot this week. Long talks and even some laughter had been punctuated by spells of crippling grief. She was glad they could all stay in the same building. Her mother's retirement community had two "guest apartments" they were currently occupying. All the same, the closeness also had its drawbacks. Her patience with her nephews and with this niece in particular was wearing thin.

"Would you like bacon and eggs, Zoe?" she called to the girl, who was standing by the dining table, staring into space.

Zoe shook slightly as she mentally returned from some distant place. "Um ... no. I don't think so." She sounded vague, uncertain.

Carol picked up a strip of sizzling bacon and lay it down in the pan on its other side. Frying this package was taking forever. She wished she had baked the entire pound, as she usually did, but had not been able to face the prospect of searching for the broiler pan in this unfamiliar kitchen.

Where were the others? She wondered how many would want eggs, and would Dad feel like eating bacon and eggs or should she fix him....

It had happened again: for a moment she had forgotten he was dead, and that his death was the reason they were all here, the reason everyone kept breaking into tears. Her father was gone, and was never coming back. The little girl inside her who had never grown up wailed silently in anguish and Carol felt her own tears emerge again as she stood sentry over the cooking meat.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

tangle
verb, transitive. To twist together intp a confused mass. Usually "be tangled."
verb, intransitive. "Tangle with" To become involved in a conflict or fight with.
Also a noun. A confused or complicated state, a muddle. A fight, argument or disagreement.

Susan thought as she sat at the bare table and waited. She knew someone would enter soon and interrogate her. She needed to be as alert as possible. She had tangled her stories so intricately that she feared she would be unable to keep them straight in her own mind.

She closed her eyes and pictured the setting before the fight began. She hadn't paid much attention to the two men at the bar as she went about her job, taking orders and serving drinks, except to note that they spent more time facing each other than they were spending looking at the ranked bottles of spirits before the mirrored barback. They were not her problem. They were the bartender's responsibility.

Her back had been toward them when she heard the outburst of cries and shattering glass. She turned to see one of the two men's follow-through after he had thrown something. The other was reaching to grab his arms. The bartender was nowhere to be seen. Other customers were leaping to their feet and crying out in fright or anger--difficult to tell. Susan had abandoned the table whose order she had been jotting down and rushed to the bar, to see Buddy, the bartender, struggling to his feet on the slatted floor behind it, blood dripping from a cut on his temple. Shards of a whisky glass lay near him, and a broken bottle on the barback dripped down the mahogany and brass doors.

Susan joined Buddy and supported him as he rose, then staggered.

"We're going in back, Buddy," she told him. "I want to look at that cut in good light."

He murmured, but she couldn't make out words in the rising din of the bar. She was aware that people were swaying and punches were flying near where the two men stood, but her priority was Buddy. She was just realizing that the man who had thrown the glass at him was someone she knew. Knew, but hadn't seen in a long, long time.

"Carlos," she whispered. What was he doing here? I thought he was long out of my life. Now he's turned up again. He was nothing but trouble before and it looks as if he hasn't changed a bit. Surely he hadn't come to see her. Or had he? She had been useful to him once, and he probably thought she might be so again, but she hadn't noticed him eyeing her earlier. Perhaps he hadn't recognized her. She had lost weight and let her hair revert to its natural brown. If he hadn't come to the bar to find her, why had he come?

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

undeceive
verb, transitive. To tell someone that an idea or belief is mistaken.

He paused when he reached the section on the application that asked, "Have you ever worked for or applied to this company before? If so, give dates and details."

He chuckled. Yes, he had worked for this company before--32 years before, to be specific. He had tolerated the abuse for five months before quitting without notice. Five years after that, he had returned and submitted an application after being laid off from the company that had hired him after that. They wouldn't meet his salary requirement and that was the end of that. He had then been hired by a company that took full advantage of his talents and grew explosively. He had worked there happily for twenty-five years. Then the boss retired and things changed.

He bent to the application again and scribbled details about the application he had filed with thm twenty-seven years ago. When he finished, there was no room to add anything about his previous stint of working there that ended so badly.

He carried the finished application to the receptionist and handed it over. He thanked her for the opportunity and left the building.

As he drove to his next prospect, he reflected that he hadn't recognized anyone he saw in the office and was unaware of anyone from his previous time there who was still employed. If they didn't check their old records, they might never discover the omission. If they did, he would undeceive them and explain it by stating that there hadn't been enough room on the application to include that earlier job with them.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

yak or yack
verb, intransitive. To talk at length about trivial or boring subjects.
Noun: A trivial or unduly persistent conversation.

After the plane levelled off, he began: he introduced himself to the teenager sitting beside him, then asked the youngster a series of questions about his interests and his school experiences. She considered some of the questions too personal for a casual exchange between strangers, but since she could not hear the responses, she hoped that the young man was exercising discretion.

Every response elicited a harangue from the man. She hoped he would tire of the effort of making conversation with a reluctant partner, but as the flight continued, he yacked on, seemingly oblivious to the teenager's hesitations, which were glaringly apparent to her. She wondered how an adult, with years or decades of social experience, could be so clueless, but she supposed that the man was simply trying to pass the time entertainingly.

It was no more entertaining for her than it was for the man's seat-mate. The timbre of his voice ensured that it penetrated the upholstery of the backrest that separated her from him, and probably carried to the passengers in front of her. It overwhelmed the drone of the plane's engines. She found herself unable to focus on the magazine article she had started reading after take-off. She placed the periodical in her lap and gazed out the window at a uniform gray field of clouds. No relief there. She normally enjoyed flying, but guessed that this flight would be an exception until they landed. Nothing seemed to discourage the pedant behind her. She would have been more annoyed had she not had the unfortunate teenager who was his target to pity.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

radiate
verb, transitive. To emit energy, especially light or heat, in the form of rays or waves. Of a person, to clearly emanate a strong feeling or quality through the expression or bearing. Of a feeling or quality, to emanate clearly from.
Verb, intransitive. To diverge or spread from or as if from a central point.
Also an adjective.

"Here's the abstract piece our teacher had us do," her mother said, extracting the watercolor from within the stack and holding it up.

Liz caught her breath as she gazed at it. Broad strokes of color, varying shades of blue, framed a rectangle of palest yellow.

"I haven't given it a title yet."

Liz shook her head. "You don't have to. You can just call it 'Untitled number one,' or maybe just 'Untitled,' since it's your first."

"She also told us that everyone who looks at it will interpret the image in his own way," her mother said.

"I agree. It's the front door of my house," Liz stated. Her mother turned from the painting and looked at Liz with raised eyebrows. Liz, too, looked away from the painting. She smiled.

She was thinking of how sometimes, on Saturday, no one in the family would remember to walk to the end of the driveway to see if any mail had been delivered. Sometimes, no one would remember about the mail until after sunset. The watercolor reminded her of the way the open door appeared as she made her way back to the house along the rutted lane, surrounded by oaks heavy with leaves that hung still in the peaceful air that sunset always brought--a pause in the wind that occurred between daylight and full darkness. The doorway radiated light as she approached, beckoning her with a reminder of the warmth and life that awaited within.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Friday, March 28, 2014

wade
verb, intransitive. To walk through water or another liquid or soft substance.
Verb, transitive. To walk through something filled with water. "Wade through:" to read laboriously through a long piece of writing. "Wade into:" to get involved in something vigorously or forcefully. "Wade in:" to make a vigorous attack or intervention.

After planning for weeks, Marlie had all the components of her budget home-office upgrade ready. Now all she needed to do was sort through everything on top of the old writing desk and dispose of it. Some of that stuff had been piled there for years. She stood beside the chair and looked at the letter file, crammed with envelopes. Some of them contained family snapshots that she had never gotten around to placing in an album. She didn't dare throw the whole mess out because of those. The thought of the brittle, aged paper and the dust made her shudder.

There was no help for it. She had already cleared the computer desk. Doing the same to the older writing desk was a necessity. One end of it rested on one of the file cabinets destined to be a support for one end of the solid-core door that was to be the work surface of her new workstation. The file cabinet that would hold up the other end was waiting on the porch. Avidly, she thought of its empty drawers, waiting to hold the accumulated paperwork of the small business she had started a few months ago. The new home office was going to be a huge help, but first, she had to deal with the detritus of the past.

Marlie gazed out the window at the autumn leaves stippled with sunlight. She had taken a long exercise walk that morning, but it wouldn't hurt her to take another.... Faintly, she could hear voices as the children romped near Jim, who was tinkering with the lawnmower. Maybe she should join them instead of dealing with unfinished business and dust on such a fine afternoon....

"Stop it, Marlie," she chided. "Time's a wastin'" The only way to move ahead with her plan was to wade into this last project and deal with it. She sat, hitched the chair closer to the desk, and picked up the first piece of paper.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

vandalize
verb, transitive. To deliberately destroy or damage public or private property.

Even though it had happened several times since they had moved to the country and started raising chickens, Mike was still not prepared for it: entering the coop in the morning and finding all the chickens dead. Whatever had done it had also vandalized the little building, knocking one roost askew and leaving a pile of droppings.

He coldly proceeded with his response. He got the leghold traps out of the cupboard in the garage where they had been stored since the last chicken-coop-invasion. They were rusty, so he spent more than an hour wire-brushing the hinges and oiling them. He found one heavy steel bar with a hole and a few pieces of scrap lumber that he could attach to the traps' chains as drags, then he carried them to the coop and set them. Four traps, in various sizes, hidden beneath drifts of alfalfa hay on the floor. He left the chicken carcasses where they lay, as bait.

The following morning, he walked to the coop with his revolver loaded. As he approached, he could hear the sound of a struggle. Inside was a fat, boar raccoon, returned to the scene of his crime. One bullet to the head dispatched him. Only then did Mike allow himself to mourn his lost flock, and the life of the predator he had just taken.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

sacralize
verb, transitive. To imbue with or treat as having a sacred character or quality.

They were never able to understand him, not even after living with him for a year and a half. He made it his life's mission to topple one icon of American culture after another, but sacralized the gathering of the household around the dinner table every evening. Anna privately surmised that it was another of his power grabs. He could direct and monopolize the conversation more easily when everyone was together, eating and sharing events of the day. He had done so over and over, choosing a statement made by another adult as a launch pad for one of his diatribes. She had lost count of the times she had sat at the table hungry and eager for conversation, only to have it hijacked and turned into another harangue on her own shortcomings. When her stomach began to clench and protest the tension, she sometimes asked to be excused, no longer able to choke down the food, only to be shouted back into her chair. She resented this so much, she sometimes fantasized about vomiting onto the table in protest.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

quadruple
verb. To increase or to be increased fourfold.
adjective. Consisting of four parts or elements. Consisting of four times as much or as many as usual.
Also a noun.

Tucking her hair up into the net, Cilla began to read the kitchen manager's list for the night's production. Item two made her pause in disbelief. Ninety-six-dozen blueberry muffins? That quantity was unprecedented in Cilla's tenure as night baker. It had to be a special order. She exhaled loudly, pursing her lips, and calculated in her head. She would have to quadruple the usual batch in order to get that yield. She looked away from the list and searched the kitchen visually for the batch book. She had never had to resort to it, but she knew it had to be in the kitchen somewhere. She was too well-trained to think she could simply increase the amount of every ingredient by a factor of four and expect the muffins to come out edible, much less attractive enough to sell. There was a formula and she knew she had to find it unless she wanted to suffer through making four separate batches.

Her gaze had just landed on the cupboard on the wall between the convection oven and the proof box when Marcy entered, tying her apron.

"Hey, Cilla. How's it going?"

"I was okay, then I read the production list. There's a special order for blueberry muffins--the usual production has to be quadrupled!"

"Eek," Marcy stated more mildly than the situation required. She was so laid-back, Cilla sometimes found her irritating.

"Do you know where the batch book is?"

Marcy began to survey the kitchen in search of it. After a moment, she stepped into the small hallway that connected the kitchen, storeroom and the office. In one corner was a steel cupboard. She tried its door. She had to struggle with it briefly, but it opened and revealed a stack of loose-leaf notebooks.

Marcy craned her neck and looked at Cilla, still in the kitchen.

"You'd better come here and look. I don't know what it looks like."

Cilla entered the hallway and looked at the contents of the cupboard. Her face suddenly lit with joy. "There it is!" she cried, reaching to pull one of the notebooks from the stack. "You must be psychic! Thank you!" she told her assistant. Marcy shrugged.

"Glad I could help."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Friday, February 7, 2014

pack
verb, transitive. To fill a suitcase or bag especially with clothes and other items needed when away from home. To place something in a container, especially for transportation or storage.
verb, intransitive. To be capable of being folded up for transportation or storage.
Also a noun.

The road hurtled beneath the car's wheels like a length of gray roving being wound onto a spindle. Whenever Mary's mind began to wander, she often found it exploring fiber metaphors. She found this phenomenon curious, because she knitted and crocheted only occasionally, and had never learned to spin or weave.

The reason for her wandering attention today was another lecture on firearms. He could talk about guns for hours on end: bullet caliber, powder weight, velocity.... She found it incomprehensible that he could remember so many technical details about rifles and handguns, but not remember the date of her birthday. She was just aware enough of his spiel to utter "Unh-huh" at appropriate times. He would not take it well if he realized that she had shut him out completely.

Suddenly, she thought of the revolver she had packed in her suitcase in the trunk. It was loaded. Instead of alarm, the thought gave her a peculiar feeling of satisfaction. It was possible, she reflected, that retreating into visions of yarn and sweater designs was not the only possible form of escape.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Growing up, Laura became accustomed to hearing the word "no." She routinely asked her father for all sorts of things, assuming that it wouldn't hurt to ask: a dog, a horse, a trip to Disneyland, permission to go to a sleepover thirty minutes before it was scheduled to begin.... His response was negative so often that it became the default in her mind.

She learned before she started kindergarten that it did no good to plead with him to change his decision. Once his mind was made up, it was as obdurate as diamond. No amount of wheedling or whining, tears or appeals to her mother for her intervention would affect him. As for her mother, she was almost as stubborn as her husband. Laura became more crafty as she grew older, and knew that asking her mother's permission first sometimes yielded results, but only sometimes. Usually, her response was, "Wait until your father gets home and ask him." Laura knew without pursuing that option what the result would be. If Mom was uncertain enough to make that statement, Dad's answer would almost certainly be "No."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

nap
verb, intransitive. To sleep lightly or briefly, especially during the day.
noun. A short sleep, especially during the day. The raised hairs, threads, or similar small projections on the surface of fabric or suede, used especially with reference to the direction in which they naturally lie.

Laura entered the front room and took a seat at the table. This was her favorite part of each day. Mike and the baby were both napping, her chores were finished for the moment, and she had a brief stretch of time to own completely.

She eyed the pencil cup and box of stationery. Should she use the time to answer her mother's last letter? This might be the only opportunity she would have for days. She looked away, gazing out the window at the expanse of wild prairie grass curving away from their mobile home's site to the little valley where a creek ran. Time crept. A bird swooped through the scene. In the distance, a flock of crows skimmed the treetops. She could hear their caws from inside, faintly.

Sometimes, she reflected, the best gift you could give yourself was the freedom to do nothing at all. She settled back in the chair and continued watching the landscape outside, letting her thoughts range and roam.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.